Taming of Jessi Rose (16 page)

When Griffin came down from his rooftop viewing of the sunrise, he found her prying and muttering angrily to herself.

“Missed you up on the roof this morning.”

“I wanted to get this done before Joth got up. I'll board up what's left of my window when I'm through here.”

She reached into the chest pocket of her shirt and
tossed him the bullets she'd already freed.

“Rifle and scattershot,” Griff noted aloud, rolling the evidence around on his palm.

Jessi declared forcefully, “I'd like to make that West, or Davis, or whatever he's calling himself today, eat that shot. I don't mind them shooting at me, but when Joth's in his room sleeping…” Her angry voice trailed off.

Griff most certainly agreed. Only a coward would fire on a child. Which was why Griffin planned on going into town today to teach Percy some manners. The sooner Darcy and his hired vermin learned that certain actions were going to be retaliated against, the sooner they'd get the message. “How about I board up the window?”

She looked up. “That would be fine, thanks. There should be some old wood in the barn.”

Griffin found it and began nailing the largest pieces to the shattered glass. If he could steal the glass out of the windows of the Darcy Hotel to replace Jessi's broken ones, he would. Glass was expensive and having it shipped way out here must have made the price even higher. By the looks of the window frame the pane had been in here for quite some time, but it had taken only a second for Darcy's men to reduce it to shards. One more thing to hold Darcy accountable for.

All the hammering awakened Joth, and he stepped outside to investigate the goings on.

“Morning, Aunt Jessi.”

“Morning, Joth. Breakfast is on the stove.”

“Okay. Morning, Griff.”

Griff paused in his hammering. “Morning, cowboy. Those varmints wake you up last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“The shooting scared me at first, but I'm okay.”

“Good. When I get back from town, maybe there'll
be time for me to teach you some marble tricks. Can't have you being beaten by your aunt for the rest of your life.”

Jessi shot him a humorous look. “And you believe you can change that?”

“I believe I can.”

She tossed back, “The two of you couldn't beat me playing as one. I've been the marble champion of Vale my entire life.”

“She's telling the truth,” Joth pointed out to Griff. “She even has marbles she won from Mr. Keel when they were eight.”

“Sure do,” Jessi chimed in. “I have marbles from all the Vale boys who were with me in Gillie's old classroom, Roscoe Darcy's too.”

“Well, you don't have any of mine,” Griff countered, “and you aren't going to get any.”

“Don't be so sure,” Jessi told him.

A smiling Joth went back inside to eat, leaving them alone once more.

“I still say you'll never beat me,” Jessi said. She'd dug out all the bullets. If there were any more hidden, she'd see to them later.

Griffin doubted he'd ever met a woman so sure of herself and her abilities in his whole life. “You're too cocky for your own good, Jessi Rose Clayton.”

She put her hand to her ear. “Do I hear the pot calling the kettle black?”

He chuckled. “You'll be eating crow soon enough. Mark my words.”

“Not from playing marbles I won't.”

“Okay, you keep on sassing me, woman. It's just going to make my revenge that much sweeter.”

His eyes were sparkling with challenge and so were hers.

“Why are you going into town?”

“To improve somebody's manners.”

She went still.

He added firmly, “No one fires on a child while I'm around.”

Jessi understood his feelings and she wanted to thank him for stepping up as her champion, but how wise was it to try and beard the lion in his own den? “You're not planning to go alone, are you?”

“Sure I am. I just want to talk to Percy, that's all.”

Jessi smiled. “Griffin Blake, you are lying.”

“Of course I am. I'll be back, though.”

He bent and gave her a quick, sweet kiss. “So don't worry and don't give those kisses to anybody else while I'm away.”

She smiled. “I won't, and be careful.”

“Always.”

 

Griff stopped first at the Darcy Hotel.

The pleasant-looking clerk behind the desk looked up. “May I help you?”

“I'd like to see Mr. Darcy.”

“Reed or Roscoe?” Griff heard a female voice behind him ask.

The voice belonged to Minerva Darcy, Roscoe's wife. She was once again dressed in a gown that would have been fine for Denver or Houston but was far too rich for the plain country blood of Vale. “Reed,” Griffin responded.

“My father-in-law's in a meeting and can't be disturbed. Is there something I might help you with?” she asked with a seductive smile.

Griff had no problem understanding what she was offering, and it made him wonder if the rumors about her sharing her father-in-law's bed were true. Personally, Griff had no intention of accepting anything from her; even in her fancy clothes she couldn't hold a candle to
Jessi. “Well, it's real important that I see him, meeting or no meeting.”

“I told you, he can't be disturbed.”

Griff decided he must not've made himself clear enough. “Mrs. Darcy, I'm usually a pretty even-tempered fellow, but when I don't get what I want, the outlaw in me becomes real nasty.”

He watched Minerva try and fail to hold on to her superior attitude.

“Either take me to Darcy or I start shooting up this place the way his men shot up the Clayton place last night. Your choice.”

Minerva looked up at him and said with a fake smile, “You're a very forceful man, Mr. Blake. I like that. Come this way.”

Griffin followed Minerva back into the inner sanctum of the hotel.

“You know,” she told him as they walked, “we'd make a good pair, you and I. You're handsome, intelligent.”

Griffin didn't bite. “I usually steer clear of married ladies, Mrs. Darcy.”

“Pity,” she responded brittlely.

When Minerva opened the doors to the study and preceded him inside, Griff saw that she'd lied. Darcy wasn't in a meeting, at least, not one with any other attendees. He was in the room alone, eating breakfast behind a big, fancy desk.

“Just protecting his privacy,” Minerva explained in response to Griff's look.

The interruption made Darcy glance up impatiently. Seeing Griff seemed to catch him off guard, but he gathered his composure quickly. His dark eyes flashed as he asked in a cold voice, “What do you want? And make it quick.”

Griff walked over to the desk. “Brought you something.”

“What?”

Griff reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a handful of the battered bullets Jessi had given him this morning, then let some of them stream slowly from his hand into Darcy's coffee and over his eggs and potatoes, and dusted the residue from his palms over the marmalade on the two fat pieces of toast. “Thought you might like them back.”

Darcy's face twisted with fury. “Have you lost your mind?”

“No, but you have if you think I'm just going to let you shoot up a house while a sleeping child is in it.”

That too seemed to catch him off guard. “I don't know what you're talking about. If Jessi's having trouble with nightriders, she should tell the sheriff.”

Griffin grabbed him by the lapels of his fancy handmade suit and snatched him across the desk and dishes so that the older man was no more than a few inches from Griffin's wintry face. “If Joth had been killed last night, you'd already be dead, so listen and listen good. Don't you
ever
send anybody out to harass that boy or his aunt again. Do you understand me?”

“Get your hands—”

“Shut up,” Griffin growled back. “This isn't a discussion.”

Darcy nostrils flared with emotion, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Jessi isn't going to give you her land and she isn't going to marry you, so leave her the hell alone.” Griff threw him back in the chair. “Where's West? I know he was the leader last night.”

Darcy angrily righted his clothing. “I don't know anyone by that name.”

“He's Clem Davis to you. Where is he?”

“No idea. And don't you ever come barging in here again—”

“Or what? If I ever have to come barging in here again, you'd better be armed. Now, where's West?”

“I said, I don't know.”

“Fine, I'll find him on my own. In the meantime, stay away from the Claytons.”

“This is going to cost you your life, Blake,” Darcy promised with a snarl.

“Only if you can hire somebody to do it. We both know you're too yellow to do it yourself.”

Griff walked back to the door. Minerva stood there as if rooted. Griff politely touched his hat to her in parting and stalked out. That was for Joth, he told himself angrily. Now for Jessi.

Instead of leaving the hotel, Griffin walked into the semi-filled fancy dining room and announced loudly, “Folks, the dining room is closed. If you'd be so kind as to leave immediately…”

A buzz filled the room as folks scurried to comply. Everyone in town knew the red-headed Griffin's face by now and he didn't have to make the announcement twice. Once the room was emptied, Griffin picked up one of the dining room chairs and hefted it for a moment to judge its weight. Satisfied that it met the test, he forcefully hurled it through the big polished plate window that fronted the street. The noise was tremendous but paled in comparison to the amount of satisfaction he received. If Darcy wanted to create havoc, Griff would give him some.

Most of the banished diners had not left the premises and were huddled in the doorway watching him with dropped jaws. You could've heard a pin drop on cotton as Griff passed them by. “Tell Darcy that's payback for Jessi Clayton's parlor window,” he drawled, then walked back out into the late morning sunshine.

He was certain Darcy had been lying about not knowing West's whereabouts, so Griff walked down to the saloon to see if he could learn anything from his new friends there.

He hit pay dirt the moment he walked through Auntie's door. West was seated at a table on the far side of the room, playing poker with four men. When he spied Griffin he didn't bother hiding his smug smile. Griff could see that he'd gotten a shave since yesterday. He looked more like a ferret than ever.

“Morning, Percy. Get all shaved up for your funeral?”

The few patrons in the bar looked up, as did big Doyle Keel behind the bar.

West kept his eyes on his cards. “What the hell do you want, Blake?”

“Your hide. You know, you could've killed Joth Clayton last night.”

“I got no idea what you're talking about. Go home to your whore.”

Griffin's punch hit West with such force, both man and chair went straight to the floor. Once West stopped seeing stars, his lips curled ferally. He launched himself at Griffin and the fight was on.

Percy managed to land a few well-placed punches as tables were knocked over and big Doyle Keel came running from behind the bar. Griff had the supreme satisfaction of beating the tar out of West for a good fifteen seconds or so, until someone busted Griffin across the back of his head with an object large enough and hard enough to knock him senseless and he slid to the floor like a wet sheet.

When he came to, he was groggy. He had a hard time focusing his eyes and his head hurt like hell. He seemed to be lying down, but he wasn't real sure. At first he thought he was dreaming, because he swore he could
see Two Shafts and his twin Neil July grinning down at him.

He closed his eyes again against the tilting room and the pain in his head, then fought to wake up fully.

“Welcome back,” the Comanche Two Shafts said.

The smile on Shafts's handsome face equaled the one radiating from his darker-skinned brother Neil.

“You really should've waited for us to get here before you started charging around breaking windows and picking fights,” Neil scolded Griffin.

Griff tried to sit up, but the ache in his head screamed so loudly he thought he might retch if he didn't ease himself back down, so he did. “What happened?”

“One of Percy's friends hit you over the head with a chair.”

Griff remembered now. He looked around. “So where am I?”

“Auntie's room,” Neil said. “Very nice lady, that Auntie.”

Suddenly, Griffin thought about Jessi. How long had he been knocked out? Were she and Joth starting to worry? “What time is it?”

“Almost four.”

Griff cursed. “I have to get back. She's going to worry.”

“The doc says you took a pretty good knock on the head. You're not going anywhere until tomorrow,” the Comanche pointed out.

“The hell I'm not.”

Steeling himself against the pain he knew would come, Griffin forced himself up and bellowed, “Auntie!!”

Ten minutes later, Griff was being helped down the stairs by his two friends. He was more or less dangling between the twins with his arms around their shoulders,
but with Auntie and the girls hovering around his descent like mama birds, he made it.

The main room of the saloon looked as if a tornado had gone through it. Broken and splintered chairs and tables were strewn about, as were broken glass and bottles. Griff tried to make some sense out of the destruction, but try as he might, he couldn't seem to remember a thing.

“Did I do all this?”

“No,” Auntie told him. “Your friends here did. They came in just as you were going down. Paid me well for all the damage, though. Anytime they want to bust up the place again, they're more than welcome.”

Griff was glad to hear it.